Alright this is not going to work long term. This lady is crazy and definitely doesn’t have the best intentions. Note to self: kill her at the earliest opportunity. Gotta follow along for now, i guess . Maybe once she gets me established i can slit her throat while she sleeps? Kinda need hands first. Note to self: obtain hands.

She didn’t even introduce herself after that, just turned around and started walking back to town. Expecting me to just follow. I looked around for other options but really nothing turned up. Just rolling hills of grass for miles and miles. So I followed.

After several minutes of walking (floating for me) she finally said “I’m going to explain things and you are going to listen. Do not interrupt. I’m assuming that you are from earth due to the english and your amazement at simple magic. Yes I can tell when a skull is in awe. Not that hard. We have had other people from earth here. We actually have an entire kingdom to the north that is run by a group that some idiot summoned here to make into slaves. Worked out well for him when one of them pulled a gun on him during his monologue. The Earth Kingdom is several thousand miles to the north through unwarded territory. You wouldn’t last a day without the wards up. Also they have much stricter magical morals up there. Even if you made it you’d be killed on site.”

“This world is called nexus. It is the literal nexus of all magic in all the planes and universes. You might see creatures from your myths here. Earth had magic too once but currently magic is in decline. It's a cyclical process that lasts thousands of years. All the magic slowly retreats to this world along with all the users and creatures that depend on it. Your myths about almost everyone are wrong however. There are no good magic users. The goal of all magic users is to gain more power. Morals are a weakness. Figure that out of die.”

“There are more ways to use magic than there are grains of sand. Rarely will you find two people who use it the same way. Myself and the College that i am a part of will teach you our methods. You will adapt them to yourself, then you will use that power for the benefit of the college. If I feel that your interests don’t align with mine, I will kill you and use you to advance my own powers. The college doesn’t care about you and id doesn’t care about me. All they care about is advancing the higher ups. I am part of them for the same reason you will be, so that they don’t kill me.”

This is starting to sound like my kind of world. Just have to figure out a way to keep all the people from killing me. Most likely kill them and take their shit. Yay for murderhoboing! Wait did she say the Earth Kingdom? Did those idiots rip off Avatar? Probably the guy in charge can use earth magic. Ten bucks says the earth kingdom is run by some asshole who thinks they can fix this world and civilize the savages or some nonsense.

She says that our mythology is all wrong but i can’t tell if she means the actual old myths that were dark as fuck or the new versions where everyone is a princess and have happy endings. I always prefered the ones where the kids get their ears cut off but I don't think I want to be on the kids side of it.

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“The rest of what you need to know and what you want to know will be handled by someone at the college. I’m sure someone there will want to experiment on you. Cursing Skulls can grow into liches eventually and several of them are trying to go that route for immortality. And yes immortality is not only obtainable but it's the first step on the path of magic. If you aren’t immortal, you don’t have enough time to become powerful. I am dropping you off at the school and then going home. I'll see you in a week.”

She then stopped talking and didn’t look like she planned to start again. We had gotten close enough to the city for me to get a look anyways and I was only half listening to her little rant anyways. Too distracted getting a look around. It wasn’t impressive.

There was no great palisade or even a gate. We just walked right into the middle of town. The streets were paved here and looked relatively clean. Houses that weren’t up to modern standards but looked well built. Mostly brick construction but the bricks blue instead of red. Slate roofs but no chimneys. Old style gas street lights but they contained some type of creature slithering around inside the glass. It was so similar but everything was just wrong. There were people on the street despite the late hour but no one even looked in our direction. It bugged me.

Really people? Floating skull with fiery eyes over here… nothing? Alright either these guys have seen some shit and I'm just not that special or they know better than to look at… huh still don’t know her name. She didn’t ask for mine either though. Do names have power here? Like with demons? Or was that the fairies? I should make up a fake name in case anyone asks me… um skully mcskullface? Thats fucking stupid… come on think… fuck it ill just have them call me mark. It's not my real name but it's close enough where i'll respond to it and it's not like i'll forget it.

There's just too much I don't know here. She could be totally full of shit and i just wouldn’t know. She said that she’ll be gone for a week so i’ll figure out what i can on my own. This college sounds like they’ll teach me at least the basics. They’ll also be experimenting on me or something too but not much i can do about that. Just have to wait it out and get them to believe that I'm going along with their plans. Make them let their guard down and see me as a non threat. Then its poisoned water supplies and plague rats in the food stores. Could probably curse the fuckers too if i can figure out how to do so safely.

The knowledge I got from my sorcery told me a lot about using my Hexes on other people. It didn’t matter how strong someone was, they could be cursed but the stronger they were the less effective. I’d have to be the subtle knife. Slowly deteriorating people over months if i really wanted to kill. At least until I got stronger.

We traveled through the city for about half an hour. Seeing more odd sites. Several people had created what I could only imagine were wizard towers. Each one personalized and made to be better than the others. Looked like some kind of dick measuring contest to me. Who would want to make that much of a statement? It's like saying ‘I’m a cocky ashole with too much stuff, come take some’. We passed all kinds of districts that I could not identify the purpose of but all seemed geared toward magical arts.

Then we saw the college. It was a little plain for my tastes.